Same. I graduated with an English degree and started “coding” by hacking machine language to make games and such on an Apple IIc (brand new) I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and there was nobody to really ask. Nobody else had a computer and there was no internet.

I kept going because there were no teaching jobs that paid anything. The computer skills led to some graphic design skills when the Macintosh came out so my “career” path was never coding OR design, it was all just “make the product.”

I lied and cheated my way into pretty much every job I ever got, learning how to do what was needed along the way, eventually breaking into management with an unconventional media/training/safety/HR department, then IS/HR dept and some journalism/IS then a retail jobbank of sorts prior to Monster, Indeed.com, etc then my own stuff that manages youth soccer tournaments.

Despite all my skills and experience, ability to learn almost anything quickly, I can’t get anyone with a job to call me back. What I CAN get, however, is a million articles on how to find a job in tech and CEOs crying about the so-called “skills gap.” There is no skills gap; just lazy, cheap CEOs who couldn’t recognize skills if it beat them senseless with a whiteboard in broad daylight in the middle of Fifth Avenue.